Oculus Rift getting Minority Report-like interface for VR.
On top of announcing a new and more affordable standalone headset at Oculus’ annual developer conference, the Facebook owned company also teased a massive update to the Oculus Rift platform.
Dubbed Rift Core 2.0, the software update is a “complete overhaul” of the Rift experience. Designed from the ground up to be more intuitive and personal, Rift Core 2.0 adds two new systems: Dash and a redesigned Home.
Dash For Multitasking
Dash is what you’d expect, a new dashboard to access VR experiences. But how Dash brings existing menus and UI into a central hub is what makes this a bit more magical and the future we know from movies like Minority Report.
Natively built for Touch controllers, Dash for Oculus Rift runs as an overlay inside your current VR experience, so you’ll be able to quickly switch from one app to the next, open your library, connect with friends, and even use the rest of your PC without any extra steps.
But multitasking is probably my favorite, a bonus for creators and developers who use VR while they work. According to Oculus, they’ve built “true virtual displays at the hardware level, so you can run multiple apps and windows, all with full graphic fidelity and performance.” You can grab individual windows, place them anywhere, resize them, and move them for an infinite workspace. Developers can even debug their VR apps while inside them, using Visual Studio, Unity, and Unreal.
Home Gets Personal
Oculus also announced a new upgrade to Home with Rift Core 2.0. Now you can customize your Home experience—with toys, furniture, artwork, and more that you can place in virtual space as you see fit. Letting you make your VR experience, well, more you.
You can put your various in-game achievements on display, and see your library come to life as a collection of retro cartridges that you can actually use to launch apps.
Because Home is persistent, you can share yours with friends and visit theirs to see what they’ve created. In the future, Oculus will open up new possibilities for community and co-presence, letting you hang out, play, and explore with others.
Oculus will release the beta for Rift Core 2.0 this December as a free update.
